garage door opened by itself

I have myQ and yesterday my garage door opened by itself. We were not home,luckily my alarm system notified us. My neighbor found the door open, I check when I got home the door would not function and a red light was blinking fast. I disconnected the unit and the garage door worked. Any suggestions? I don't want my door opening by itself.

Walt - I apologize that your door opened on it's own. The symptom that you have described is called "Phantom Operation". There are a few things that can cause this type of problem. The most common causes are: possibly caused by a neighbor's remote being inadvertently programmed to your opener, a stuck button on a remote control, or a shorted wall-mounted door control sending unwanted signals to the garage door opener. I have included troubleshooting instructions below.

Dawn,Does Chamberlain have any plans to address the "shorted wall-mounted door control" issue? It appears that there are many customers, including myself, that are experiencing this problem. This isn't the only post that I've come across regarding this particular "phantom operation" issue. I see that in all cases that the issue was resolved, it involved replacing the wall mount control. So far I haven't been able to locate the "Smart Control Panel", only the "Motion Control Panel". They are also $30 plus.Scott

I have experienced same problem. How can I trust this product in a 30 below temp???I have no intention of installing another smart control panel. I will install my 25 year old Overhead Door wall switch instead, it never failed me in 25 years

I have experienced the exact same issue. Truthfully, it is rather frustrating. The main reason I purchased this opener is to just be doubly sure i closed the door, now I am checking the app a dozen times a day because my door always seems to be open.

So many people are having the same issue, I myself installed it less than a month ago and this has happen twice. I say we should all get refunded for this faulty system Chamberlain.

Blaming it on other things rather than your product is not right, I think Chamberlain should acknowledge they are selling faulty equipment and stop selling this product.

I know I will be making a YouTube video warning people not to purchase this faulty equipment. This is not safe for people, especially if they have nice things in their garage. I know I have my expensive mountain bike and street bike that could easily be stolen. Luckily I have cameras, but that won't stop anyone from stealing them.

I am starting to think there is no fix to this problem. I have installed a couple of hundred door openers and never had a problem until this stupid belt drive myq opener that I put in for my customer. Since then nothing has worked to prevent phantom opening and I have lost every penny of profit and am in the hole driving back and forth to try to fix the problem. This opener is 2 months old and I am going down monday morning to remove it, throw it in the garbage, and put a regular old chain drive nothing fancy opener on it. These things are junk. It is time for me to cut my losses and move on with life.

I also have a MyQ garage door opener that I added to my existing Genie and Liftmaster. I have not noticed any phantom opening on my Liftmaster but I have had two phantom openings happen on my Genie in less than a month. A quick explanation about my neighbors garage opener possibly being programed to mine is not possible since they are not close to me. I have had my genie for 11.5 year and have never had this problem. I like the concept of the MyQ but there is a real problem going on her that can't and shouldn't be explained away with a generic phantom statement. Come on now......Fix this problem because it won't go away with an exorcism.

Exorcism (from Greek ἐξορκισμός, exorkismos – binding by oath) is the religious or spiritual practice of purportedly evicting demons or other spiritual entities from a Garage Door opener or a Garage they are believed to have possessed or even in the vicinity of your neighbors garage.

My garage opener is opening itself the for the third time in two days, I cleared the previous codes and reprogrammed both remotes, and still, not resolved. Now I m leaving it unplugged.

I can't believe Chamberlain hasn't addressed this issue after all this negative feedback.I m so disappointed with the slow response of their customer care; I have to replace it with a different brand. I don't know if I can trust this brand anymore with the safety of my family.

I purchased and install my garage door opener about 5 days from HD. I have been having the same issue so I have not been able to use the garage door opener at all since when I close it the door it returns back to open status.

Imanol, we apologize you are experiencing "Phantom Operation." There are a few things that can cause this type of problem. The most common causes are: possibly caused by a neighbor's remote being inadvertently programmed to your opener, a stuck button on a remote control, or a shorted wall-mounted door control sending unwanted signals to the garage door opener. I have included troubleshooting instructions below: Why does my garage door opener activate on its own? http://chamberlain.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/232

Thank you for your reply however , the issue has been fixed. The problem lays on the instructions, at no time it says that as you are "teaching" the controls how far to close the door you should stop a few inches 3-4 before the door is close this way the weight of the door will take care of the rest and completely close and won't returns back.

I have no intention of installing another smart control panel, which was my issue for phantom opening. I went to Home Depot and observed a empty shelf, of where new control panels are sold. This was enough for me to not ever install another one. How can you trust this opener to stay shut???

I just installed a new garage door opener with the MyQ feature. Reading the possible cause because another remote opener in the same frequency. This is not possible I did walk around on the near garages and it is not seems the case, none of them were activated with my remote and neither of them on a perimeter of 100 yards were neither opened or recently closed by my neighbors.

Chamberlain: Please send me a work around and a troubleshooting so my family and I can feel save. Otherwise I will have to return this system and to install another brand. Of course it will be costly (another take out, reinstall and install) and extreme time consuming. Very, very very disappointing.

FYI: Discard the Internet as an Issue; because incidentally the Internet in my area was down for 3 days. And this issue was happening again and again even without Internet service. Must be another item at fault, my guess could be a particular internal component that I cannot figure it out; discard also the frequency of another remote control neighbors. We need a solution from the manufacturer here !

Important: As a temporal solution to sleep well and not finding in the morning the garage door opened I will set the home Alarm on "Stay" at night time, so if some exterior access is opened such us the garage door my alarm will set of. Very inconvenient.

I too have been experiencing "phantom operation" for many months now, after working flawlessly for over a year. I have woken up in the morning to hundreds of alerts with my garage door opening and closing over and over throughout the night while my family was asleep. This is a HUGE SECURITY RISK, and Chamberlain needs to figure out what is causing this issue since it appears to be widespread with MANY PEOPLE affected. The only solution for me is to ENABLE THE REMOTE LOCK feature on the wall control panel. This makes it so no remotes are unable to open the garage, but allowing it to still operate. When enabled, the button on the control panel can still open and close the garage, as well as using the myq app, but it is a pain to have to use these methods instead of being able to click a remote. This makes me think it is not an issue with the wall control panel, since when the lock is enabled, it will still open the garage. It also doesn't appear to be an issue with MyQ, since I am still able to open and close the garage with the MyQ app, when lock is enabled. Again, I don't experience phantom operation anytime lock is enabled. I didn't pay all that money for a garage door opener, to have to use some ridiculous workaround, to ensure the safety of my family. I WILL NEVER BUY A CHAMBERLAIN/LIFT MASTER product ever again, and will make sure to tell as many friends, family members, coworkers, etc. about the problems with their products and why they shouldn't purchase them either. Chamberlain/Lift master can't even admit to the issue, let alone resolve this major security threat. As you can see, many people have already experienced theft and other problems associated with this "Phantom Operation" issue, and it completely defeats the purpose of owning a garage door opener if you are constantly worried that it will open on its own during all times of the day. For Chamberlain/Liftmaster to try to blame these things on a neighbors remote accidentally being programmed to openers is laughable. I assure that my neighbors aren't all night pushing their garage remote over and over hundreds and hundreds of times, and I am willing to bet that isn't happening with the thousands of people experiencing this issue.

We started having this problem today. The wall unit beeping but the door doesn’t close. We closed it by the wall unit and about 10 minutes later it opened by itself. I tried to close the door with the app but the wall unit just beeped. Again we closed it by the wall unit. And again about 10 minutes later it open back up. I see that the app updated 2 days ago. Tonight was the first time that the door was closed by the schedule. I turned off the schedule. We’ll see if it open up again... nope, just open up again.

Similar to Karen, we had phantom operation of our garage door yesterday. Initially at 520am, which led to the mindset of 'who is breaking in to our house right now!' MyQ unit on the wall was blinking a red light and was 'frozen' from operation. Unplugged and reset to close the door. Phantom operated again about an hour later. Have now left it unplugged and am using the front door. Have no faith in the MyQ unit at this time!

Justin, thanks for letting us know. Most times, there's a low-tech reason for such an opening. See if any of these troubleshooting tips solve the issue: https://goo.gl/eG4nQx. If they don't, send me a note and we'll figure out next steps. Lauren

I have been able to isolate the problem to the wall mounted unit, a MyQ unit. I have replaced with the old standard Chamberlain wall unit and habe not had the issue repeated. Please recommend a path forward to address the issue with the MyQ wall unit.

I've had the MyQ Liftmaster smart GDO for several years now. I just added an 823LM light switch to my account to control the lights in my garage as well and after powering up the garage door opener again (same circuit), the garage door has a mind of its own and has been opening and closing randomly. We just got home from being gone most of the afternoon and the garage door was open! I can assure you we didn't leave it that way. Now the indoor wall controller is constantly blinking and will not shut off after holding the learn button in for 10 seconds. I'm about to scrap it!!

I completely reset it and the wall unit behaved for several hours before flaking out again. Completely lost its mind and started with the red and yellow constant blinking. The garage door was randomly opening and closing. My wife and I watched it do it several times in succession so the chance of a neighbor being on the same frequency is slim. I completely disconnected it from the wall and can now rest easy that I won't have things stolen overnight. I can't find the original wall button so I now have two bare wires to "hotwire" the garage door open and closed. I called customer service and told her all the troubleshooting steps I took and she said that the wall unit is the very likely the cause. Unfortunately that she said it only had a one year warranty on it and I've had mine since 2014.

I did have this problem for a week or so, I wiped out all the remotes on the motor. Waited a few days before programming another one just to see if it would continue to open on its own with no remotes.Once it did not open during the time period, i programmed one remote at a time. This worked for me but everyone has different issues.

I had a LiftMaster swing gate operator Model RSW12U installed less than a year ago. It worked well for about 8 months. Since then I have experienced continuous "Phantom Opening", similar to the problem most people are having with their Chamberlain/LiftMaster garage door openers.

I had tried the following measures independently to no avail: (1) Disconnecting the myQ; (2) Removing the batteries from my LiftMaster Model 811LM remote controls; (3) Changing the positions of the dip switches and re-programmed the system; (4) Checked if there is any interference of signals from neighbors; and (5) Contacting Chamberlain Technical Support.

The "Phantom Opening" still persists. I suspect that the culprit is most likely in the electronics, which I suspect are similar to the ones in the Chamberlain/LiftMaster Garage Door Openers that most people are having problem with.

I hate to admit it, but perhaps I had wasted my money on a piece of junk!

A little less than 2 weeks ago, I erased all codes, reset the positions of the dip switches in the remote controls, and essentially re-programmed the systems again. So far I have not experience any "phantom operation".

I have same problem. Bought a garage hub few days ago for Craftsman brand garage opener. Randomly opening/closing without any interaction. Very scary and unreliable. This is like paying money to lose all the peace of mind. I am returning it.

Write a replySo these posts go back years and they still haven't done anything to fix
this problem? I have 3 from the 8500 series, I am appalled at the
amount of headaches these units have been giving me. One needs to have
the up and down limits and force limits reprogrammed a few times a year.
2 of them decide to periodically open all by themselves for no reason.
Sometimes it will start to go down and then go back up so you can't pull
away from the house anymore until you see it closed. So far I have
changed all 3 remotes, a wall switch and a circuit board. I have spent
countless hours on the phone with their inept service staff to the point
of losing my cool. To wake up in the morning and realize you went to
sleep with your garage door open all night is a serious issue, as is
coming home and finding your garage door is open.If any lawyers are on
this board or anyone wants to start a class action lawsuit, I would like
to be first on the list. This company needs to fix this VERY SERIOUS
SAFETY ISSUE immediately, start offering REAL fixes or refunds. If I am
not contacted by a company rep, my next step will be to contact every
consumer advocacy group, news media and consumer protection agencies I
can find and make sure they don't get away with this. They are STILL
selling the same defective units, knowing full well the problems they
have, this must be escalated......

To all consumers with phantom opening problems with their
liftmaster garage door openers. I personally own 3 from the 8500 series and
have been dealing with this phantom opening problem for years. Phantom opening
is when your garage door opens and closes all by itself. Like many of you, I
have come home and or woken up in the morning to find out that my garage door
opened all by itself, VERY scary and unsafe for many obvious reasons. I have
spent many HOURS of grief on the phone with their technical people and have
tried many different attempts at fixing this including but not limited to
changing remotes, rewiring, reprogramming, changing circuit boards etc. This
morning, I was able to ‘catch’ the door going up and down dozens of times by
itself which I captured on video.

The myQ wall control is the culprit people. I am an
electronic technician by trade and decided to do a little troubleshooting
myself. The copy and paste solutions the company keeps posting is a joke and
they obviously have no respect for people’s time and safety. Call them and have
them send you a new myQ programmable wall switch. I disconnected mine and the
door stopped going up and down by itself. After dis-assembling I quickly
noticed that capacitor C1 and C18 are leaking causing a short in the circuitry
which is making the door go up and down. This is a common problem on electronic
circuit boards nowadays and is most likely due to the cheap inferior capacitors
being used. I would like to admonish the company for not figuring this out on
their own and caring so little about the safety of their customers.

Ron I think you are spot on with this. I've had a Chamberlain MyQ for about 3 years, never had a problem. I live in a VERY densely populated city, never had a problem with a neighbor's transmitter--unit was even working great while having to be coupled to my 15-20yr old opener. Last week though, I started getting push notifications that my door was opening/closing at random which kept on for the entire day. Like others, it's a VERY bad feeling to think your garage is open--in my city I could be cleaned out in minutes. I hoped it was a notification or email glitch until I came home to find my door wide open. I went through basic troubleshooting of checking wires for proper connection, my transmitters worked or were powered down, etc, and door operated correctly when I removed the MyQ opener from the equation and put my old school button in. So like you, I looked into the opener itself. I'm not a pro like you, but I am an electronics hobbyist and have repaired tons of old boards. These caps you mention are the exact same two components I have on my board, and one of mine has some leak happening on one of the legs. FWIW, ESR readings are correct on both of these caps for me, but I haven't removed them from the circuit yet to determine if capacitance is out of spec. I looked up the the data sheet and was honestly surprised to see these are pretty well chosen for the application. Good temp range for the application--I thought for sure I was going to see some cap that wasn't rated fro cold weather. Perhaps the circuit they are in is dirty and they don't love the variance, I'm just speculating. Or maybe it was just a bad batch, and/or they are otherwise prone to leakage. Either way the corrosion on the cap legs is not good.

Maybe Chamberlain just wants to ship me a new one--I loved it while it lasted! :)Good luck to everyone getting their up and running, it's a cool product.

We are sorry that your experience with our openers have not met your expectations. This situation should not be occurring at all and we want to make sure we get this fixed right away. Can you email us your contact information at social@chamberlain.com and reference this post? We are happy to have someone working on this right away.

Same symptom here. My 888LM (date code 06/13), which I installed almost exactly 3 years ago started phantom opening my door a week ago, and then failed completely (no orange LED, and open/close button unresponsive). Power-cycling had no effect. I replaced the two 1F super capacitors (C1 and C18), and this did _not_ correct the issue.

I called Chamberlain and they have sent me a replacement 888LM at no cost, which is supposed to arrive tomorrow...

People on Amazon are complaining about this same "fails in three years, opens my door, so I'm afraid/angry/shocked":

Mine have a date code of 9/13 so they should replace both of my too. I hoped that they fixed the known issues with the 888LM. When it works its great but that phantom opening overnight will not cut it.